


Don't Mention the Wookies

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-30
Updated: 2006-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney's up to something, and John's bound and determined to find out what the hell it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Mention the Wookies

On the morning of his birthday, John finally tracked Rodney down, cornered him outside the transporter on level three, and fixed him with the sort of glare he usually reserved for those he was about to shoot. In the gut. With pleasure.

Rodney twitched.

"What," John asked, voice dangerously low, "are you up to?"

"Up to?" Rodney repeated airily, tilting up his chin, apparently aiming for nonchalance. "Why would I be – up to . . . something?"

John stepped closer. "You've been acting weird."

Rodney squared his shoulders. "I think we can agree that normal social niceties are not exactly – "

"Weirder than usual."

Rodney glanced at his tablet, then back at John. "Oh?"

"Yeah." John set a hand on the wall beside Rodney's shoulder. "Experiments with the Asgard beaming technology at 4am?"

"An optimum time of day," Rodney replied. "Atmospheric disturbance is minimized, giving us opportunity to test the parameters of . . . "

"Spending all your free time in the north pier?"

"Would you rather I conducted experiments into improved energy containment in the gateroom, Colonel? Perhaps in the mess, or the sleeping quarters – somewhere where human injury could be maximized in the case of a meltdown?"

"And now," John continued, voice smooth and dangerous, speaking as though Rodney hadn't said a word, "I find out you've not only hijacked two naquada generators for your own personal use, but somehow convinced Elizabeth it's okay."

"If Dr. Weir feels my uses for – "

"Spare me the bullshit. You're up to something."

Rodney set his shoulders. "I am not."

"And you're a lousy liar."

Rodney pressed his lips into a thin, mutinous line. "It may come as a surprise to you , Colonel, but not everything in this city is your personal concern."

John slammed his other hand against the wall, making Rodney flinch. "Wrong."

Rodney swallowed. "And you are _impossible_ to surprise."

John opened his mouth, paused, and shut it again. The conversation had just taken a completely unexpected turn. "What?"

Rodney sighed with exasperated disdain. "Far be it from you to allow us to try and mark your birthday in some kind of style," he said, gesturing impatiently. "Or wait twelve more hours to have this kind of infantile moment. No, no, you have to know everything, the very moment it happens."

"It's been – " John forced the gears in his brain to grind forward, to pick up the thread of what they were discussing somehow. " – weeks."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Oh, the horror," he deadpanned. He studied John as if he'd crawled out from under a particularly nasty rock. "Well, since it seems unlikely you'll let me leave with all my limbs attached until I satiate your ridiculous sense of curious self-entitlement - transporter?" He gestured to his left.

"Um. Sure." John stepped back, let Rodney open the doors.

Rodney waited. "This millennium?" he asked at last, when John made no move to follow him.

"Yeah. Why not." John looked over his shoulder, then back at the transporter before cautiously stepping inside.

*****

"So," he managed when they arrived at the hanger Rodney had transformed into his own personal fiefdom. "You've been working on – hallucinatory gas deployment?"

Rodney sighed. "Happy day. In our wildest dreams we couldn't have imagined a better reaction to seeing your gift."

John wet his lips and ordered himself not to panic. There had to be a reasonable explanation for this. "Gift?"

"A person doesn't turn forty every day," Rodney sniffed. "And considering the odds of our collective survival since arriving in this galaxy, it seems rather more cause to celebrate than usual . . ."

"But uh – " John frowned, considering his words.

"Hmmmm?"

"It's – " John gestured.

"Yes?" Rodney asked, sounding annoyed.

"It's an X-Wing fighter, Rodney."

"Thank you for pointing that out, Colonel. In my hours of work on its systems I hadn't _noticed_ that it was a completely alien form of – "

John blinked, but the fighter was still there, with four engineers and a host of scientists working patiently on various component parts of its hull. "But it's an X-Wing fighter."

"You are so pathetically limited in your vision of how the universe works it's a wonder I can stand to be near you," Rodney sighed, sounding pained.

"My vision of - _what_?"

"I'll go slowly – let's see if you can keep up, shall we?" Rodney asked as though talking to a very simple child. "When an electron moves from point A to point B it simultaneously takes multiple routes to make that journey. With me so far?"

John would've rolled his eyes, but he was looking at the X-Wing, and it was an _X-Wing_ , so Rodney could say whatever he liked.

"From there it takes very little extrapolation to consider the idea that multiple versions of reality can exist at the same time, beginning in a particular spot, but diverging wildly in their route to some eventual and probably unpredictable end."

"Uh-huh." John wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. He was drooling.

"From _there_ \- well, it takes a spectacularly unimaginative mind to believe that wormholes would only be able to link different portions of geographic space, particularly considering what we know about time dilation and the forces of – "

"You – " John turned to look at him, squinting, puzzled. "You're saying you – "

"Worked out how to open a wormhole between this reality and another, yes, yes," Rodney agreed, waving the interruption away with a sharp flick of his hand. "Once we managed to do that, it was only a matter of exploring each variation until we found one that – "

"Star Wars is _real_ somewhere?"

"Yes," Rodney said, screwing up his mouth. "And you really don't want to know how well Ronon got along with the Wookies."

"So you – " John wet his lips again. "Lemme get this straight. You took the half-formed possibility of there being a way to travel between alternate universes – "

"Hello? Genius?" Rodney offered.

"- single-handedly figured out the means to manipulate wormhole travel to get _to_ those alternate universes – "

Rodney shuffled his feet. "Samantha Carter may have helped with some of the equations."

"- and when you'd made this happen, you stole an X-Wing fighter?"

Rodney looked at him as if he were possessed. "We didn't _steal_ it," he managed. "God, you really are a philistine. We _negotiated_. One jumper for one X-Wing fighter, an R2 unit and – "

John's head snapped around to look at the fighter again. "It has its own R2 as well?"

"Well, _obviously_ ," Rodney sighed, exasperated. "How else would we – "

"And it's mine?" John said, the implication sinking in.

"Yes."

John turned to look at Rodney. "Really?"

"Really. Happy, you know, birthday. Congratulations on managing to live this long – God knows it can't last."

John smiled, and the smile became a grin. "You got me an X-Wing fighter."

Rodney colored a little. "Well, not just me. I just completely reworked what we know about physical possibility and retrofitted a jumper to make the . . . "

"You got me an X-Wing fighter," John repeated, stepping closer.

Rodney looked anywhere but at John's face. "Maybe."

"Rodney, you dog."

"Dog?" That had his attention.

"I'd have slept with you for a hell of a lot less," John drawled. "Say you'd just, I dunno, asked, you'd have found I'm a pretty sure thing."

"You are?" Rodney choked out, voice at least an octave higher than it had been before.

"Oh yeah," John smirked, backing him up against the hanger wall, into the shadows.

"I – I – "

"I'd like to thank you," John murmured, dragging his nose over Rodney's cheek. "But I have an X-Wing to go fly . . . "

"Yes, well, if you blow yourself up before you actually _can_ say thank you – "

"I won't." John leaned in close and slowly, decadently, sucked Rodney's bottom lip between his own. "Back soon." And he turned and clattered down the metal stairs between the upper observation deck and the main hanger floor.

"You're a jerk!" Rodney yelled after him.

John turned and waved, grinning like a maniac. "You love it!" he yelled back, before jogging over to the X-Wing and lifting a reverent a hand to its belly. He didn't hear Rodney disagree.


End file.
